WWE: 10 Things Today's Wrestling Fans Wouldn't Understand About The 90s

2. When Vince McMahon Was Only An Announcer

As a kid, I had no idea that Vince McMahon was the owner of World Wrestling Entertainment. How would I know? He was the main television announcer for many years and there was never any indication that he was anything more than an excitable announcer. Sure, there was the steroid trial in the early 1990s that was in the public eye, but when we're kids we don't know about things like that. It's not like we picked up the news section in a newspaper or flipped it to CNN. The on-air President of WWE was Jack Tunney during the late 1980s and through the mid 1990s. In reality, he was just a local promoter in Toronto, but to those of us watching at home he was the man in charge. We didn't know better. I couldn't do a search on a computer about Tunney. You either knew or you didn't know. After they stopped using Tunney in 1994, they transitioned to Gorilla Monsoon as the WWF President in 1995 and Roddy Piper was even in the role at one point. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leG3Aq4orCo Once 1997 hit and WCW was kicking WWE's ass in the ratings thanks to the NWO angle, WWE stared to acknowledge that McMahon was the owner of the company. Prior to his full heel turn in early 1997, Bret Hart did an expletive filled promo ranting towards McMahon about how unhappy he was. Later that year, Steve Austin gave McMahon a Stunner for first time, which was a huge deal. By the end of 1997, McMahon was off of commentary and became a regular on screen character that would eventually become arguably the greatest heel in WWE history. Go back to watch some of those shows in the late 1980s or early 1990s. McMahon came off as this nerdy announcer. He didn't look like an owner of a major company. In that sense, maybe he was the greatest worker of them all.